[P2P-F] Article : Have the Super-Rich Seceded?

Wed Jan 11 15:38:54 CET 2012

Similar tendency in european countries ? ( found via J. Medaille fb wall )

http://www.truth-out.org/have-super-rich-seceded-united-states/1326127151

Have the Super-Rich Seceded From the United States?
Tuesday 10 January 2012
by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis
*excerpts :*
*"financial sharks typically take their compensation in the form of capital
gains rather than salaries, thus knocking down their income tax rate from
35 percent to 15 percent. "*
 "But that's not the only way Mr. Skin-in-the-Game benefits: the
6.2-percent Social Security tax and the 1.45-percent Medicare tax apply
only to wages and salaries, not capital gains distributions. "
 "The real joke is on the rest of us. "
"In 1950, payroll and other federal retirement contributions
constituted<http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/tables10.html>
 10.9 percent of all federal revenues; by 2007, the last "normal" economic
year before federal revenues began falling, they made up 33.9 percent. By
contrast, corporate income taxes were 26.4 percent of federal revenues in
1950; by 2007, they had fallen to 14.4 percent."
 +
"To the extent public education "reform" is popular among billionaires and
their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the
more than one-half trillion dollars in federal, state and local education
dollars into private hands"
 "ii. This stratagem follows the template of Halliburton's privatized
military logistics activities as well as George Bush's proposed Social
Security "reform": funneling public dollars into corporate hands."
 "A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of
Andrew Carnegie. *Noblesse oblige* like Carnegie's is presently lacking
among our seceding plutocracy."

"I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that time about how the
super-rich and the corporations they run would secede from the nation state.

I do not mean secession in terms of physical withdrawal from the territory
of the state, although that happens
occasionally.(i)<http://www.truth-out.org/have-super-rich-seceded-united-states/1326127151#i.>It
means a withdrawal into enclaves, a sort of internal immigration, whereby
the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from
any concern about its well-being except as a place to extract loot. Our
plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and
ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety
is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause
less apprehension - and viable public transportation doesn't even show up
on the radar screen. With private doctors on call, who cares about
Medicare?"

"The super-rich have seceded from America even as their grip on its control
mechanisms has tightened."

*A version of this story originally appeared at
Counterpunch<http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/05/have-the-super-rich-seceded-from-the-united-states/>
.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20120111/8e9a3492/attachment.htm 